Timely horror

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2004)

Every summer, the news media pounds a story or series of stories into the ground until that season is known for it. Consider a couple of summers ago, which was the summer of shark attacks. Or the recent summer of child abductions. In reality, there were not more shark attacks or child abductions in their respective summers, but the media grabbed a couple of high profile cases and built trends around them (road and air rage media circuses also apply here, very fittingly). 2003 will probably remembered as the summer of SARS and monkeypox, which makes it the perfect summer in which to see `28 Days Later'. As the story opens, Jim (Cillian Murphy) wakes from a coma in a locked London hospital room and finds it deserted, the key to his room shoved under the door. In a series of amazing shots, he wanders by Big Ben and through Piccadilly Circus and finds no one. He does find walls plastered with missing persons photos that immediately bring 9/11 to mind (although the film was made before then). He finally finds three people who bring him up to date: a vicious virus was accidentally unleashed by animal rights activists freeing specimens from an Army facility. The virus is blood borne, and if you're infected, you will be dead in twenty seconds. Those infected are overcome with rage, attack those around them, and vomit infected blood everywhere. Get this blood in an orifice or wound, and you've got twenty seconds yourself. In twenty-eight days, England has been wiped out. This sounds like one of Romero's living dead movies (but since the writer wrote the book and movie `The Beach' and the director, Danny Boyle, is responsible for `Trainspotting', there is no doubt an anti-drug subtext here) with one major difference: these zombies are fast. They move like lightening, although they do nothing more than infect the living, not devour them. This virus is not a smart one; without sustenance, the world will be quickly wiped out, and the virus with it. The first third of the movie, the discovery phase, plays like `Night of the Living Dead'. The second third, wherein four survivors search for others, plays like `Dawn of the Dead' (including a deliberate homage, a shopping trip). The end finds them in a military base, like the one in `Day of the Dead', right down to the zombie tied up for experimental purposes. But Boyle did not make a mere horror movie here. This is social commentary with a pulse, fast and furious, and it will put you on the edge of your seat. It's shot in grainy digital video for a documentary feel, and the camera struggles to keep up with the action when it occurs. You think you see more than you do: the savage flashes of marauding monsters will make you shrink away from the screen, but the gore is minimal. Boyle overreaches somewhat; horror fans will no doubt jones for more outright scares, and the audience that would love dissecting the film will be put off by the graphic violence and tone. The cast is game, with Naomie Harris strong as the seemingly tough chick and Brendan Gleeson sympathetic as a concerned but gruff father. Everyone digs deep and seems real enough to make you care, a rare trait in a horror movie, even an arty one. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen a movie that the military folks are up tp no good (although I would have never guessed their sinister plot), so as the film rachets up the tension, building towards the climax, it actually loses creativity. The shocks here are among the best in the film, but we can feel it running out of speed. Watch the scene with the rats in the pitch black tunnel; that is the kind of nail-biter the last part of the film should have delivered. And the actual finale seems a little too upbeat for such a dark vision; it jars with everything that has come before it. Boyle has said that the movie is about Jim's search for a father figure, but that message is obscured by the seeming prescience of current events the film achieves. Strap in and read into `28 Days Later' whatever you wish to; there's enough here for everyone.